Luck Saw The Light On Eyler

Larry Eyler was shrewd. He was lucky. And, for a time, he had the law on his side.

His luck ran out Wednesday when he was convicted of murder by a Criminal Court jury. A suspect in at least 20 murders, Eyler was convicted of murdering Daniel Bridges, 15.

The janitor who was shocked to find Bridges` body never suspected that one of his neighbors was a murderer. But police had been on Eyler`s trail for a year.

Less than a year before Bridges was murdered, police charged Eyler with murdering Ralph Calise, 28, an Uptown ``street person`` who was found dead in Lake County, Ill., on Aug. 31, 1983.

But a judge ruled that Indiana State Police acted illegally when they held Eyler without arresting him and without probable cause. Evidence police believed was crucial was suppressed and Eyler was freed on a $10,000 bond.

``We felt then it would be just a question of time before he became comfortable and would act again,`` said Lake County Sheriff Robert ``Mickey`` Babcox after Eyler was indicted for the Bridges` murder. ``We knew he could not contain his urges to kill.``

After Bridges` violent death--the 24th murder that police linked to Eyler --the legal system marshalled its resources to make sure Eyler never walked away again.

Indiana police stepped back and Lake County authorities waited. Wednesday`s verdict was the victory they have hoped for since they started tracking Eyler in 1983.

``He was a very clever, intelligent, calculated-type killer,`` said Detective Sgt. Ted Knorr of the Indiana State Police, who traveled to Chicago for the Cook County Criminal Court trial. ``The verdict certainly put a smile on our faces. Justice had eluded us for some time.``

Police were convinced that Eyler was a killer--but could never gather the proof. Murder after murder fit a pattern: Young men and boys, aged 14 to 28, were stabbed to death and found in rural fields, their pants pulled down to their ankles. Many were ``street people`` with connections to the homosexual community. Some had their hands or heads severed.

Bits of evidence fit together. In one case, a witness said he saw the murder victim get into Eyler`s truck. In another, Eyler bought gas at an Indiana gas station hours after the Uptown murder victim disappeared--and only a half hour`s drive from where the body was found.

In a third, someone using Eyler`s credit card made a call from an Indiana pay phone a mile from where a body was found--again just after the victim disappeared from Uptown.

``I wish I could line up a jury and go through each case and we`d get him on each one,`` said Daniel Colin, a detective with the Lake County Sheriff`s office.

On. Aug. 21, 1984, a janitor got angry because his garbage dumpster had been filled by someone else. He ripped open a garbage bag and a human thigh fell out. Eyler, now 33, was asleep in his apartment in a nearby building at 1628 W. Sherwin Ave.

It was what police needed. They painstakingly searched Eyler`s apartment for evidence that Bridges` body had been dismembered there, and prosecutors built a case in which they said the youthful victim ``spoke`` to jurors through circumstantial evidence.

Now prosecutors are collecting the pieces that link Eyler to other murders, hoping to use them when Eyler`s death penalty hearing is held.

Appeals courts have so far upheld Lake County Judge William Block`s ruling to throw out the evidence in the Calise case and now prosecutors are waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on it, said Michael Fritz, chief deputy of the Lake County State`s Attorney`s office.

Meanwhile, evidence in that case will be used against Eyler at the death penalty hearing, he said.

Indiana authorities are hoping for another chance at Eyler. ``We didn`t have the smoking gun,`` said Sgt. Knorr. ``We had bodies in the ground or under the ground, crudely buried. We were dealing with bones.

``The next thing that has to happen to us here in Indiana is to have the opportunity to talk to Larry Eyler. . . . Before this, we didn`t want in any way, shape or form to get in the way of this (Bridges) investigation and trial.``

Investigators speculate that Eyler, who came from a Roman Catholic home and once considered becoming a priest, killed when other young men reminded him of what he hated in himself: his homosexuality.

``He probably hates himself,`` Knorr said.

Eyler, the youngest of four children, was born Dec. 21, 1952, in Crawfordsville, Ind., and grew up in small towns in Putnam County. His parents divorced when he was a child.

Eyler dropped out of high school in his senior year, put in two years doing odd jobs in the Greencastle-Indianapolis area, got a high school equivalency diploma and enrolled at Indiana State University at Terre Haute.

He moved into the home of bachelor college professor Robert David Little and attended school periodically from 1974 until he moved to Chicago in the spring of 1982, where he was a self-employed painter.